Nationwide financial inclusion drive to be rolled-out

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The trainees

A Trainer-of-Trainers (“TOT”) workshop for the roll-out of a nationwide financial inclusion drive has been concluded.

This lays the foundation for the deployment of about 50,000 University/Polytechnic graduates under the “Youth in Revenue Mobilisation” (“YRM”) programme and deliver an appreciable spike in the coverage of financial services.

The workshop, which was organised by the UNCDF and the United Nations Development Program (“UNDP”) as part of their financial inclusion drive in Ghana, was on Digital Financial Services (“DFS”), with special focus on Agent Network Management.

The sessions covered areas like Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”), Know Your Customer (“KYC”), financial inclusion, interoperability, the DFS regulatory framework, DFS product development and value-added services, among others.

There were also interactive sessions and case studies including group activities on regulation and procedures.

Participants, who numbered 28, were selected from Eban Capital, Aya Technologies AG, YEA, UNCDF and the UNDP. They also included representatives of banks, financial technology companies, non-governmental and private organisations and some stakeholders in the financial inclusion space.

The successful end of the workshop paves the way for the employment of 50,000 graduates who would be trained to provide access to financial services in all the 216 districts across the 10 regions of Ghana.

The project is expected to offer all Ghanaians, home and abroad, a more reliable, convenient and secured access to financial services based on the deployment of state-of-the-art technologies to eliminate fraud, drive transaction costs down significantly and empower every citizen to bank.

The nationwide financial inclusion drive, which would be strategically propelled by the deployment of DFS, is a collaboration between Eban Capital Limited and key government institutions, with the support of the United Nations Capital Development Fund (“UNCDF”).

J.S Amegah, Group Chief Executive Officer of Eban Capital Limited, said: “the workshop has been extremely useful for network management as we seek to equip and deploy about 4.5 million youth as network managers across Africa to support our value delivery system. This is one of the quickest means for countries like Ghana to achieve a cash-lite-economy and unprecedented socioeconomic growth, job creation and poverty reduction.

Eban Capital is happy to partner with government institutions and the private sector players in Ghana to create 50,000 direct jobs for our graduates, who would be trained to employ 150,000 more merchants over the next two years to drive Ghana’s digital economy and impact over 8 million lives in our rural communities.”

Speaking after the Workshop, the Economic Officer for UNDP, Mr. Kordzo Sedegah, stated that “The collaboration between UNCDF and UNDP is a purposeful one that will lead to improving financial inclusion and ultimately human development in Ghana.”

Commenting on the training, Hermann Messan, the Programme Specialist for UNCDF, stated that “this is part of a whole campaign dubbed ‘Bringing Informal to formal leveraging on technology’.

This is a three-tier approach at ensuring that those who are financially excluded will be included in accessing financial services.

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